Posted
by
Soulskillon Monday October 13, 2008 @11:35PM
from the you-stole-my-cloudsong dept.

With the rise of MMOs and other persistent environments over the last decade, the trafficking of virtual game property has become a multi-billion dollar industry. Regardless of whether the buying and trading goes on with the blessing of the content provider (or, in many cases, the owner of the account in question), the question of players' rights to virtual goods is coming to the forefront. The Escapist Magazine takes a look at how some companies are structuring their EULA in this regard, and what some countries, such as China, are doing to handle the issue.
"... the differences between China and the West in this case have more to do with scale than cultural norms. So many people play online games in Asia — and play them so intensely — that social problems in meatspace society inevitably emerge in virtual worlds as well. ... The general consensus, therefore, is that paradigm shifts like the ones that have already occurred in Asia will inevitably come to the West, and with them, the need for legislative scaffolding that keeps us all from killing each other."

Ownership of online content of this is not clear-cut, like ownership of your chair or computer might be. You don't really own your character; the game company does--your character is subject to the alterations and whims of the company as needed, and access is even based upon whether they let you or not. They can kick you off if you are selling gold, selling your account, being a jerk, or because they simply don't like you.

Some of you may have an entitlement complex going on--"But it's mine! I am paying for it!" No, you are paying to RENT it, to have access based on their terms. Remember, they're the one making the game, without the company you couldn't have a game in the first place.

I think user agreement on MMOs are particularly important. If you don't like the terms of ownership or the rules, then don't play. They make no real guarantees. They make no guarantees that the in-game economy will remain just as stable, that they won't nerf rogues in a future patch, or that your character won't receive a huge revamp for balance.

Too often, I think, consumers fist-pound over their rights when they are the ones who signed the contract conceding the terms in the first place.

Can you imagine people suing Blizzard for devaluing their online property because Blizzard nerfed a certain set piece, or introduced better items?

People seriously want to bring the government into this? If you don't like the terms, don't play. You aren't owed. You do not have a special right; you agreed to the transaction upon signing up. You pay to play a game, and nothing beyond that unless you agree otherwise.

Ownership is less clear-cut than you are making it, because virtual worlds introduce the idea of virtual labor. In some ways, it is as if you were being paid in factory scrip. Virtual worlds have introduced a new category of activity: play-labor, which acts a lot like regular labor, even though it occurs in the context of leisure. That's why there's markets for virtual-world currency.

China has generally decided that you have first dibs on the rights of the product of your labor, even if its virtual labor in

There are limits to the rights you can give up even in a contractual setting: you can't sell yourself into slavery, you can't legally work for less than minimum wage.

You don't get out much, do you? That's maybe how it works in rich countries, but not in the rest of the world.

(Using an example I have plenty of experience with...)

In the Philippines it is the norm to pay (as a legal bribe) your first two months salary for the privilege of getting an overseas job. It is also the norm that the paycheck sticks to the fingers of the agency involved on the way through, so what is a minimum (or subminimum) wage in the target country, turns out to be much less for the poor sap

Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that these overseas jobs would not employ there if they couldn't get away with that practice. I assume you'd be OK with the locals starving instead, because at least there would be no "unfair" employment practices in play. Am I correct?

I assume you'd be OK with the locals starving instead, because at least there would be no "unfair" employment practices in play. Am I correct?

Are you addressing me, or the guy I responded to? If me, you completely missed my point.

My sympathies are firmly with the locals and if ever I am in a position to do so, I will open an outsourcing shop on Mindanao, hire as many locals as I can, train them as necessary and pay them as much as is profitable. Or my sons will do so if they follow in Dad's footsteps.

Ownership is less clear-cut than you are making it, because virtual worlds introduce the idea of virtual labor. In some ways, it is as if you were being paid in factory scrip. Virtual worlds have introduced a new category of activity: play-labor, which acts a lot like regular labor, even though it occurs in the context of leisure. That's why there's markets for virtual-world currency.

China has generally decided that you have first dibs on the rights of the p

virtual worlds introduce the idea of virtual labor. In some ways, it is as if you were being paid in factory scrip. Virtual worlds have introduced a new category of activity: play-labor, which acts a lot like regular labor, even though it occurs in the context of leisure.

Can you imagine people suing Blizzard for devaluing their online property because Blizzard nerfed a certain set piece, or introduced better items?

I can and obviously you have never browsed the online WoW forums. There were plenty of kids who were pissed off when Blizzard devalued the level 60 epic mount training. I'm sure there will be plenty more when they devalue the level 70 epic flying mount training after WotLK has been out for awhile.[1]

Not to mention the fact that all the folks who are now strutting around in top tier level 70 purples will have their entire wardrobe made obsolete in a couple of weeks.

Actually, I have browsed the WoW forums; I used to play the game. People whined constantly there but no one has actually sued--the statement I made was actually based on the whining and all the tears I saw there.

Anyway, no, there is no middle ground, at least not legally, and probably shouldn't be. You choose to play in the first place. It's a game.

Can you imagine people suing Blizzard for devaluing their online property because Blizzard nerfed a certain set piece, or introduced better items?

Actually, sadly enough, I can easily imagine that. One constant in my MUD days was that there'd _always_ be at least one idiot threatening to sue over some imaginary rights that he either made up or grossly misunderstood. We even had a stereotype of the "my dad is a lawyer and I'm gonna sue you" kid.

Ok, so you bought the game, don't want to accept the agreement. What do you do next? Stores love trampling on the rights of consumers here. "Oh, sorry, we don't take returns on opened computer games or software." Which equates into "Because there are some people out there who like copy the discs and return them for a refund, we believe everyone does this". So what are you left with? It depends. If the store gives you credit, you at the very least have that (although the store keeps their money regardless. H

The business of the games company is to make money. making society work
is the responsibility of the government. If there is an emerging
trend as TFA contends, waiting for the free market to select for
socially responsible game companies is probably not going to be a
particularly efficient approach.

You're the one who raised the issue. The article doesn't say "we have a right to own our MMO stuff". It says (and I'm paraphrasing here) "there appears to be an emerging social problem here, and that is bound to put pressure on governments to address it in legislation".

They won't do anything? Tough, it's a fucking game.

It stops being a game when it leads to violence and murder on a regular basis.
Feel free to dispute whether we're in any danger of rea

It's not a problem, it's people who think it's a problem and are whining about things not going their way or having shit luck. Again, deal with the company that is making this "virtual property", not the government.

People have killed each other over games of football, too; Football, however, is still a game. People also kill and commit violent acts over girls, stupid pride, and people's driving habits. And the answer is what, government regulation of MMOs? I can't believe I'm seeing people here throw ar

I don't think anyone is claiming it is a problem right now.
The concern is that it may be becoming a problem. Or more precisely,
that it may be becoming a problem in China, and that there's a risk
that western gaming communities may follow the trend.

People have killed each other over games of football, too; Football, however, is still a game

True But if they kill each other too often, it ceases to be just a game. That's why we
don't have a bare knuckle prizefighter circuit any more for

The idea that the companies owe you nothing and can do whatever they like is ridiculous. When you purchase World of Warcraft at your local store, you are entering into a contract with reasonable expectations out of both the purchaser and the company making the game. If you were to buy WoW for $50, take it home and load it on your computer only to be told "Sorry, we're no going to let you play because we don't like you," then you've just been defrauded out of $50. Blizzard has broken the undestood contract t

How about if I came as a guest, and you gave me a series of very strict rules I had to follow, then on a whim, and without warning, you changed them? I'd be pissed, wouldn't anyone?

And you wouldn't come back. But would you seriously sue?

What if as a part of the evening entertainment, you led a knitting class? The guests had to pay for the materials; you provided the instruction. At the end of the evening, we weren't allowed to take our projects home.

I doubt I am the norm, but I have always viewed my "ownership" of in game items as more akin to a rental than a lease/mortgage/etc. I rent the apartment I live in, and while in good standing I have exclusive rights to use that property within certain limitations agreed upon between myself and the owners. Were I to stop paying rent, I would be kicked out.

One of the options I had, at the time the agreement was made, was to enter into a second agreement to rent a refrigerator. Had I done so, I would not h

For the games companies, this one is a nightmare. Think about some of the points that need addressing: (And I admit I have not RTFA)

If you own the virtual items, things like a rollback causes you loss. You can demand they be returned.
If you own an item, and the developers decide that it is too powerful, and they nerf it. Do you need to be compensated? Should you be?
If you can buy and sell items ingame legally as your own items you are actually selling something that is beyond your control. You are selling data, but in reality you are selling a virtual item - really messy around IP with that from a legal aspect.
If you own the goods in your characters inventory what happens when you find out that the game is really old, no-one plays it and it's going to be scrapped? Do they fax you a printout?
If it's items you own, what about your character itself? What about ingame houses and real estate?

I do not think any game guarantees that kind of value (nor should it).

That's the exact point. If you go with item ownership, then you buy an ITEM. You do not but a speculative state of an item.

That's the whole issue with item ownership. It opens up a ton of murky brackish concepts that no-one has the real answers for. It also makes any legality around items that anyone could propose an utter nightmare.

I suspect you're thinking about this from a Second Life point of view and I'm thinking about this from a WoW point of view. Second Life is such dangerous territory to enter I'm positive that it will create problems that no one in positions of authority will have the slightest clue in dealing with until they are dead and replaced by people who grew up with such games.

Actually, not at all. I have never played Second Life. I have however played the following (roughly in order) Ultima Online. Everquest. Ragnarok Online. Star Wars Galaxie

I would really however recommend that before any case ever gets to trial with this sort of thing, all the questions and answers are laid out in black and white. Otherwise we are in all sorts of trouble.

Just to make the absurdity a little clearer, how would this rule effect interactive dinner theater? Say you pay to access dinner theater, and from the painful sweat of your brow within the night you have hammered out a nice little role for yourself as owner of a jukebox joint in Chicago and ruler of most of the Chicago maffia. Maybe one of the other guests offered you 20 real dollars for you to abandon the post so that they could take it. You were having fun, so you turned them down.

I've personally experienced the first two cases, first one in DDO and the second one in EVE, both times I've stopped playing the game.

DDO had to do a rollback; the reasons for it sounded very fishy, took them almost a month to figure out how to compensate people, and when they did those getting the compensation wasn't the necessarily the same being hit by the rollback (they rolled back data from a single day holiday (a Thursday) and the compensation also happened to be on a Thursday.

On one hand, many people put a lot of real life time into earning said virtual property, and in many cases it clearly holds actual monetary value in the real world.

On the other hand, should I be liable if I accidentally delete a player's data in Game!? I don't think that's realistic, especially when you keep in mind that Game! is completely free of cost. So does that mean they really own the things they've earned, or no? I'm not sure.

Do I own this Slashdot comment? Slashdot says I do, and they don't claim any responsibility for it, but what happens if Slashdot deletes it on me? I've lost something I own, and there's nothing I can do about it. That doesn't seem right.

Ultimately, I think we'll see that virtual property is legally blessed to have real life monetary value, in much the same way that software is.

I think you hit on the tough point right there. Virtual property is a snarl-- not just as regards legality, but as regards the nature of what possession and even existence mean-- virtual "property" is both a "property" in the sense of a tangible good and a "property" in it being a mere setting state in some database, and who owns that?

Even traditional IP, though, has more groundedness in its meaning than this sort of property. Even things such as this comment have intrinsic value outside their environment.

It's almost like the collapse of a company or country, with the property being the hyperinflated currency or worthless bonds. Does the company or country owe the bondholders anything beside the paper they're printed on? Derived value be damned, they got what they bought. Does the MMORPG owe the player anything besides screenshots and memories?

I think this is quite insightful actually. I would agree that "items" in "virtual worlds" are really more like a form of unofficial currency than a form of property. "

what happens if Slashdot deletes it on me? I've lost something I own, and there's nothing I can do about it. That doesn't seem right.

It's not their problem if you're stupid enough to store the only copy of your valuable written insights in something as unsuited to the task as the slashcode system. Save to your local computer, fool.

Now, in the case of online virutual worlds, you didn't create that Godslayer of Hit Points sword your character carries. If you did, you'd have a local copy of the 3D vector file used to draw it. No, the GoHP sword is just an in-game milestone. It doesn't matter that i

Do I own this Slashdot comment? Slashdot says I do, and they don't claim any responsibility for it, but what happens if Slashdot deletes it on me? I've lost something I own, and there's nothing I can do about it. That doesn't seem right.

Property - the mapping of resources to individuals, and more recently, to organizations and groups - is just a story: a virtual mapping that most everyone is told and most everyone agrees to. It is an extremely useful story we've come up with that has roots in both biological nature (territory, mating, food gathering) and in legal and social precedent (commerce, deeds, titles, etc). . . and to date there are no other means of organizing scarce resources that reduce conflict more effectively than property. Property makes clear which person or group has control over a thing and most everyone agrees with the story. Modern societies have also extended the concept of property to information in a few ways, and those have worked pretty well too: those IP protections motivate and reward creative expression.

However, when it comes to organizations and companies creating information things that are simulations of physical things, (just database rows existing in virtual environments) - it is not so clear that the benefits of the property story outweigh the costs. Simply put, within virtual worlds, the reason to also have the property story on virtual items is usually to artificially maintain scarcity - so some virtual items have more value to the people who want them, and to make the virtual world have characteristics like the physical world, and not because the virtual "items" are in any real sense scarce.

This disconnect is where the conflict will truly emerge. Even people who understand why we need property in the real world may still not accept or acknowledge or follow the ideas of property regarding virtual items if there is no compelling reason to need the property mapping/story to allocate scarce resources or to motivate and reward creative expression.

Yes we have this confusion, don't we? One thing to keep in mind is that it takes "effort" to acquire/create property. That applies not only to physical property but virtual as well. The scarcity comes from the fact that effort is a scarce resource. The fact that others can make infinite copies of said property doesn't make the effort any less spent.

Yeah, whenever someone complains about losing an account because they were banned for hacking, and how they should sue the company for the money they lost. I always have to ask them if they plan on declaring all the gold they earned(in terms of real money) on their taxes.

This is just like a golf membership. The main difference is that as part of that membership, the golf-club supplies the clubs you can use. In other words, you don't *own* the clubs. But you can still beat the crap out of another golfer to get their borrowed clubs. If you actually owned the clubs, doing that might be considered a felony or something...

I'm really shocked at the tone and direction the "5" folks at alashdot have taken on this. Why? They are basically saying that you as a user/consumer have no rights shut up!

This is part of why I don't play those types of games. If I create a character, back story, personalize it, and level it up, and collect some items for it, that's mine! That's my personally created content that I and every user own their own copy right over. Depending on the character editing UI, I can make my character look exactly like

I would agree with you on principle here that perhaps an MMO gamer does deserve some rights to their character or their in game items, but I think the intrinsic problem is that your stuff only exists on a database owned by someone else.

Let's say you worked hard on your character. You spent hours on the character creation screen giving him a unique look, you penned a riveting backstory for him, and you created unique looking items for him to wear. (Presuming this is even possible in your MMO of choice.)

What happens when the MMO dev goes under and they pull the plug? You can't take that character (along with all of his money and items) and move him over to a new MMO. He's stuck on someone else's server. You can take your D&D Character sheet to another DM's table and maybe he'll allow you to play with that character in his game. You can't really do this with an MMO....It would be interesting to see an "Open Source" MMO engine that would allow character transfers between actual games, but I doubt we'd e

This is pretty obvious. Read the EULA/TOS for most games, and they will most likely state that all the data is owned by the company that owns the game. Unless there is some specific agreement that you own specific pieces of data (i.e. your character(s), their items/equipment, or their gold/platinum/whatever), then it is probably safe to assume that you are simply paying for access to the MMO server/database and do not actually own anything on it.

Exactly, with fiat currency, the numbers in the bank only mean something because enough people say so.

Inside the crown of one of the kingdoms in the Society for Creative Anachronism (http://www.sca.org/ [sca.org])is the inscription "You rule because they believe".

The medium is a bit retro perhaps, but the message is the same. Money rules because we believe in the accounts. Or at least that ATM dispenses stuff that people believe in, and will probably continue to do so until 1 loaf of bread = 1 wheelbarrow of dollars.

My WoW bank and characters are very real to me for several hours most days.

While effort is a renewable resource. A given effort over time can't be reclaimed for another purpose. e.g. leisure. Also effort scales poorly. e.g. Barter. And last effort can't be stored for future use. e.g. Like in a bank. And since the majority want to enjoy the advantages being a society brings. Money (however it's backed) is the best representation we have for overcoming these disadvantages. Money rules because it's in everyone's best interest to preserve their effort for their use.

Exactly, with fiat currency, the numbers in the bank only mean something because enough people say so.

Inside the crown of one of the kingdoms in the Society for Creative Anachronism (http://www.sca.org/ [sca.org])is the inscription "You rule because they believe".

Yes, from political power to the shoes on our feet, it's a matter of agreement. Now, the value and ownership of virtual items, is a facinating phenomenon.

Consider that people who play in virtual realities, online, in the SCA, in tabletop RPGs, or otherwise, do play within a set of rules. The players know what everyone owns, and have ideas as to the value of said items, irregardless of whether any meatspace value in currency is assigned to them.

Since there is significantly less currency existing than there is money represented in bank computers by series of bytes, what are those goods and actual assets exactly?

The data represents a claim on the bank to be repaid in physical currency. If the computers say you have $100 in your account, you can come in to the bank and withdraw that amount in a marketable form unconnected with the bank itself. Currently that form (barely) retains its value only as a result of stringent anti-counterfeiting laws and the issuer's fears of hyperinflation, but not so long ago it took the shape of high-quality scarce resources deemed valuable in their own right -- and not just for trade.

The amount of currency in existence includes that held in bank accounts, because if there ever was a run on the banks the FDIC is committed to provide nearly the full amount in the form of Federal Reserve Notes. This would imply massive production of new paper currency, but if the reserve requirements were increased accordingly it need not mean massive inflation. Prices already take bank balances into account; trading those balances for paper currency would make little difference, so long as it didn't increase the amount banks can create via loans.

FDIC does not commit to sending you paper currency, it commits to setting some bytes in a different computer...

The FDIC commits to "insuring" your money against bank failures, which are typically recognized as the bank's inability to supply paper currency and coin in response to requests for withdrawals. I'll admit that the FDIC web site is remarkably short on details in this regard, but what exactly would "deposit insurance" mean if not a guarantee that you can withdraw your deposits?

But I don't see what any of that has to do with your checking account be a "a series of bytes" that it is worth quibbling about the ownership of.

Then you missed the whole point, which is that a bank account isn't just "a series of bytes", but rather a legal claim on the bank. P

Indeed. However those are a representation of assets, not your actual assets.Granted the "score keeping" is done digitally, but it is directly related to your estate.The goods are not data.

While pretty much true, it's not exactly how it works. Banking has, and likely always will be, an investment in itself. Much like the stock market.

When banking, you agree to give the bank your money for a big 'ol IOU sticker (these days a digital one). The bank takes your money and invests it. They don't just keep it in their vault until you want it back while it magically grows more money (interest rates).

Surprisingly, this should be well enough known today, what with all the banking crisis talks and a

It's not quite that simple. When you join a chess club you get access to the pieces but they are not yours to take away, but when you join a pottery club you get access to clay and it *is* yours to take away after you're done with it. Granted, you can also make original creations out of chess pieces but you're not supposed to, at least in any chess club I know of. Coming back to virtual realities, if a game provides the digital equivalent of clay which players can utilize to implement their own creative wor

In WoW, Apolyon, the Soul-Render [thottbot.com] is Blizzard's IP, and they let you use it if your raid kills the big boss dude. Perhaps it's like being able use the coolest chess set if you're the best in the club.

If a player creates something cool in Second Life, it would be their IP.

A report out of China tells the story of a 41-year-old man who stabbed an acquaintance who stole his "Dragon Saber" in the MMO Legend of Mir III and sold it for approximately $1,000. Initially, the injured individual sought the assistance of the police, but was told that the theft was not a crime, since virtual property is not covered as a protectable asset. Thereafter, the individual attacked the alleged thief at his residence.

Ha Ha! What the lawmakers really need to do is make meatspace vigilante justice legal! It would sure cut down on 10 year old punk kids raiding that wimpy fort with the unarmed priest(who happens to be a karate master in real life)!

If you play games, you may not have a problem. If you have no job but play games for 4 hours a day, you have a problem. If you pay more than 50-60 bucks at a time for anything to do with gaming, you're just an idiot.

For one thing, you aren't paying for the items, you're paying to play the game and to pay the company's bills, and hopefully they will use some of the left over profits to make new content for you to play, so you will keep subscribed and pay them more money.

Technically, your items are nothing more than records in a database, owned by the company. All MMORPG companies likely can legally do whatever they want with this "property", from giving their employee game accounts every "super-rare" item for free, and lots of money for nothing, to messing with random players' items and stats to deleting random accounts to the whole database. Of course these would all upset players, leading to less money income as players leave. It's all about the money, so for now they will protect your virtual goods for you because it's in their best interest... but they're not really yours.

At least, that answers your question of who else could own them. I suppose it's still a matter of perspective, and EULAs.

However can you really "own" something that has no context whatsoever outside of that company's property (the game servers)? The database records in question would just be a bunch of strings and integers. Useless to you on their own without the game giving them context and meaning.

Other examples that come to mind... I can say I own the files on my computer because I own the computer, plus they still are useful when removed from my computer to other computers (note what this says about DRM). I can say that documents I create with Google Docs I own, because although I don't own the servers I created them on, it's trivial for me to print them out or download them in formats I can use locally.

Shadowbane [wikipedia.org] allowed (allows?) you to do just that; it has a thief class which is capable of stealing items right out of another player's inventory. It resulted in several... amusing situations, although I only played it briefly a while ago when it first came out. I had one group with three thieves, among some other players, and all three of us kept rampantly stealing from all the other players (of course, the thieves all knew this because we could peek into each other's inventories), and trying to see who

The reason for the prohibition on sales of in-game assets is not entirely to keep the gold spammers out (although I find that laudable personally) but to keep the governmental authorities from closely examining the financial transactions that go on in a game. If you buy in-game gold with real-world dollars -- and subsequently sell items you acquire with that in-game gold for real-world valuta, there is a compelling argument for examining such transactions as to whether or not they are a mechanism for laundering money. The EULA prohibitions are to keep any such enquiries from the tax and legal authorities off the game hosting company's back.

1. Virtual property doesn't exist: that's why it is called virtual. Saying that you own a sword in World of Warcraft is as non-sensical as saying that James Earl Jones owns the death star.

2. You never buy a "thing," and you never get a copyright. You're paying for the potential for access to copyrighted material on a server somewhere. That you have to further play a game to get access has no bearing on the fact that you were never actually transferred a copyright.

3. Game makers have structured the interaction carefully to allow themselves freedom to maintain a healthy game experience. If the value of all items within a game needed to remain fixed for sake of a stable economy, no positive balance changes would be possible and the game experience would crumble.

4. If you did "own" virtual propery, you would need to pay american dollar taxes on virtual transactions. If you happened to fight and slave and earn an Amani Warbear, for example, you'd be owe an additional 45 dollars in capital gains taxes.

Gold is just a pretty yellow metal, and yet people have and continue killing each other over it. Just because something has no intrinsic value doesn't mean that it doesn't have externally assigned value. In fact I'd go so far as to say that nothing has truly intrinsic value, because there is nothing in the laws of physics that would correspond to the human concept of "value", so all value anything might have must be externally assigned.